Should the USA stop immigration of muslims into the country? I think yes. I would go further, and declare – through legislation – islam a seditious ideology and outlaw its practice. I would even close mosques.
Let me be clear. This is not my being opposed to a strange religious practice, or a group of people because of their ethnicity, this is about recognizing islam as a violent, totalitarian ideology. In the same way we would not invite members of a violent cult to live in our homes with our family and children, we should not invite islam to live in our larger civilization. And recognizing its violent and totalitarian nature, we should outlaw its practice.
I do not see this as a violation of religious freedom. If I declare an intent to kill everyone who does not join my cult, and propagate that idea through my offices, then declare my beliefs a religion, am I then free to go about carrying out my agenda and proselytizing others to kill and subdue as well? And is a society that wants to protect its citizens, its freedoms, and its way of life within its rights – within its responsibilities – to prohibit that cult from practicing?
If not, why not?
And if that violent cult wishes to bring more of its members from overseas to join them, are we morally obligated to admit them?
If so, why?
The term “fix our broken immigration system” has been hijacked by the left and others who want large numbers of low skilled laborers. However our system now is broken (by Ted Kennedy) in that the prior national quota based system achieved much of what you might want to do today. It was biased towards European countries in order to put the least stress on cultural issues. Reinstatement of this would go a long way. Tightening up our visa control system would also help without raising the drama level. Monitoring visa overstays and acting on them was mandated post 9-11 and never implemented. Of course having a visa waiver does not legally guarantee entry into the USA. Better vetting and tighter standards for both visitor and immigrant visas are easily implemented without having an explicit ban on Muslims.
An active will to enforce the rules will do the job.
I favor a 25% tariff on all predominantly Muslim countries in order to pay for terrorism defense. So called allies like Turkey, Pakistan and Saudi have contributed greatly to terrorism. They should help pay to defend what they created.
The political organization that is Islam is what concerns us.
As a fly-over citizen from the mid-west the stereotypical pushy, loud, New York personality is usually off putting to me. Trump, though, has identified major areas of USA public life and governmental actions that are “stupid”. During the last six months he has defined a few major problems, selected the agenda, and looks like an energetic leader. And that (especially in the presence of mealy-mouthed, go along to get along people beholden to big money, and Democrats) is a good thing for the republic.
I wouldn’t outlaw mosques but I would publicly denigrate the Koran by explaining what the Koran says. Certainly allowing new Muslims into the country is allowing subversive people into the country.
Should the USA stop immigration of muslims into the country? I think yes. I would go further, and declare – through legislation – islam a seditious ideology and outlaw its practice. I would even close mosques.
I think we should screen immigrants better and should reject any who appear to have Islamist sympathies. We should also shut down institutions that do fundraising or recruiting for terrorists. We should probably also consider a moratorium on immigration from countries whose immigrants have caused disproportionate trouble for us. However, as I argued in the comments on this post, I think that any attempt to prohibit or restrict Islamic doctrine or practice would be a very bad idea.
You have previously argued you did not think it was legal or constitutional. I think it is legal, constitutional and justifiable. Do you have reasons beyond legal questions, are you opposed on principle? If so, what?
To further inform the debate, I suggest we all take three minutes and skim through the following:
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
Coulter proposed a ten year moratorium. I’d agree.
What we are objecting to, and I agree, is the political movement of Islam. In some Islamic states, like Iran for example, mosque attendance is down to about 2-3% of the population. David Goldman has theorized that Iranian women are “voting with their uterus” to rest the status of Muslim women. One of the women killed in San Bernardino was refugee from Iran.
There are thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who acted as interpreters and who might be willing to drop Islamic practices if allowed to immigrate. Instead, Obama seems determined to import a hostile, Islamist population of angry young men and radicalized women.
Some people have tried to make an analogy with Jews who were not allowed in in 1940 but there was no history of hostility by Jews and the religion of Judaism, like Christianity, does not require political control. Christians live happily in Israel. The Jews in Israel fear being engulfed by the political Islam that surrounds them.
Trump is clumsy and bumptious but is on the right track here. He is already being compared to Hitler by the left but his ability to handle media is almost like Reagan’s.
The Muslims in this country are not helping themselves by acting self-righteous.
Mike,
I’m opposed mainly on principle. I don’t think this country has any business policing religion, especially when very few of a religion’s adherents cause problems. Instead we should enforce our laws against destructive behavior while welcoming (and protecting) Muslims who want to assimilate into our culture.
I also don’t think that outlawing Islam would hold up in the courts, and for good reason.
Phil, interesting statistics. I’ll add that I saw a poll result recently that 12% of UK muslims support attacks and killing of their fellow Britons. With 2.7 million muslims, 12% ~ 325,000. That should open everyone’s eyes. Nice guests.
Obviously we should end immigration of Moslems or others incompatible with our society. The internal situation in France is now very dire. We certainly are not yet at that level of internal danger but if we do not bring immigration under strict control we will eventually also suffer France’s fate.
To Mike K – We need to be very cautious about immigrants from North Africa/Middle East even if they are not Moslem. North Africans/Middle Easterners are very different people from Europeans, much more kinship and clan oriented in comparison with individualistic Western Europeans. The IQ levels in North African/Middle Easternern popuLations are also rather low – ranging from the low eighties to the low nineties.
“I also don’t think that outlawing Islam would hold up in the courts, and for good reason.”
Oh, I agree. The political Islam is what is the problem and the Saudis are funding most US mosques. I remember reading a couple of years ago about a moderate imam who lost his mosque because the Saudis came in with big money on condition their imam took over.
I do think Arabs are the biggest problem because they are the closest to the original Muslims and the most likely, along with the Pakistanis, to be radical. Indonesia is less so although the book, Accidental Guerrilla, by David Kilcullen describes Arabic speaking young men coming into New Guinea to rally locals for jihad.
I reviewed the book in 2009 here.
The situation is in one way like the Jews in the thirties – religious beliefs are being persecuted (in ways, as then, beyond our imagination in horror); Christians are being thrown out of boats pressing toward European shores and kept out of the camps from which refugee status will be applied. I have heard these comments more than once – perhaps they are exaggerations, but we know what happened to some groups and we know the statistics on the number of Christians and Jews – in those countries long before the Muslims took over – is decreasing in a dramatic way. We also can hear the rhetoric of the leaders of some of those countries and certainly of ISIS and Al Quaeda.
A religious test is not a good thing; a realistic recognition that some are being persecuted and killed – and are likely to continue to be so if they stay in certain countries – should be part of our policy. We certainly let people we saw as Muslim victims in during the Yugoslavia conflict (one in which it was certainly not always easy to see who was the villain and who the victim).
I don’t exactly agree with Michael and I still find Trump generally simplistic and vulgar in a populist way; Trump looks a lot better following Obama though. When Trump seems to be the one representing the real world, it says (continues as so much to say) a lot about Obama. Probably a lot of you have seen Ben Sasse. This is pride in the right things.
First, the restriction of entry of ANYBODY not a citizen is legal. Current US statutes give the president that power.
Obama has used that power to prevent Iraqi refugees after we abandoned Iraq from coming here.
Any foreign national, even with a visa, can be expelled at will. Visas are not permanent, and are only valid at the sufferance of the government. If they have not taken that oath of citizenship, they are here at our sufferance. For any reason, but the statutes say specifically that anyone who is deemed to pose a national security threat, or a citizen of a nation at war with us.
Which leaves some interesting options. Today, we treat the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, as passed by Congress, to be the legal equivalent of a declaration of war. Here is the text of what we passed after 9/11, with my emphasis:
Add to that Islam believes that all of Islam is one “nation”, the Dar al-Islam or the Ummah and the rest of the world is the Dar al-Harb, the “world of eternal war”, one could make some interesting interpretations.
Now, I keep hearing various commentary on how Trump referred to Muslim citizens oversea. I understand, and am willing to be corrected, especially with an authoritative cite of his own public statement, that what he called for was a suspension of Muslim entry or immigration till we have time to sort things out. Which would be legal under current statute. I am also given to understand that a reporter asked one of his staff, not him, about returning Muslim citizens. If he spoke of barring the return of US citizens, he was flat wrong. If a reporter, staff member, or commentator invented it, it is flat wrong. If they are American citizens, they have to be allowed to return. If they break the law [assuming a government that has any intent of enforcing a law on anyone], deal with that.
Now as far as banning Islam, it is dicier but in ways that are not as being discussed. The Religious Tests clause of the Constitution only applies to public office. The Establishment Clause only applies to an official government supported church favored over all others. What does apply is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. However, the clause does not grant immunity from criminal processes.
Article III, Section 3’s definition of treason could be applied to political Islam and terrorist acts in furtherance of such. As can aiding and abetting. Each case will have to be proved individually unless and until a conspiracy can be proved. I suspect that the guidelines in RICO will be in play. And that if we ever have an American government interested in preventing terrorist attacks, after the next couple of mass killings, in play with some enthusiasm.
I’m pretty sure that we have attorneys about the site. I would appreciate it if they could comment, pro or con, on my reasoning.
Obama created Trump. We had a gentleman as candidate in 2012 and the country made a titanic error in re-electing Obama. Now, the base of the GOP and a big segment of Democrats, not the ones posting on the Huffington Post, support him.
I don’t like him but have not so far seen the alternative. Maybe Cruz who seems to be keeping a low profile in this matter.
All I know is I bought another gun and my daughter-in-law, who is uncomfortable with guns, is taking a gun class and will probably buy one. She has three girlfriends doing the same.
France tolerated immigrants who refused to assimilate into French culture. American Muslims so far have been more willing to assimilate. Whether we have problems with them going forward may depend on whether we make clear, as we once did to all immigrants, that we expect them to adopt American values and mores.
One way to discourage such assimilation might be to treat Muslims as a group as hostile, rather than focusing mainly on the differences between those who want to become Americans and those who want to attack Americans.
>>Whether we have problems with them going forward may depend on whether we make clear, as we once did to all immigrants, that we expect them to adopt American values and mores.
Multiculturalism is designed to keep people broken into separate identity groups. It’s the anti-melting pot. That’s another idea which should be thrown on the ash heap of history.
“One way to discourage such assimilation might be to treat Muslims as a group as hostile”
I see that as ideal but the evidence is not in.
The sudden jihad syndrome is very worrying. In 2002, we had a sudden joihad at LAX by a guy whooshed to be assimilated.
Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old Egyptian national, was identified as the assailant. He immigrated to the United States in 1992, he arrived on a tourist visa but claimed political asylum.[4] In Egypt he was arrested for being a member of Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, and Islamist group. He denied the accusation to U.S. immigration authorities. He said that he was a member of Assad Eben Furat Mosque Association, a group that aimed to “understand truly and apply Islamic law in the 20th century under any circumstances.”[5] Despite these Islamist commitments, he was given permission to live in the U.S. while his asylum application was pending. His asylum request was denied in 1995 but a letter notifying him was returned by the Post Office as undeliverable and no further efforts appear to have been made to locate and deport him.
Hadayet had a green card which allowed him to work as a limousine driver. He was married, and had at least one child. At the time of the shooting, Hadayet was living in Irvine, California.
He killed two people and had been here ten years.
Another LAX shooting in 2013 seems to be a nut without terrorist associations.
We may learn something from The Hamtramck election of a Muslim majority city council.
The issue of Islam has sometimes come up in recent years as the Muslim population grows. After contentious debate, the city allowed in 2004 the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast publicly five times a day from mosques through loudspeakers.
I guess we will see how they do in the majority.
A Sharia tribunal has been set up in Dallas.
“While participation in the tribunal is voluntary, a married couple cannot be considered divorced by the Islamic community unless it is granted by the tribunal,” El-badawi told Breitbart Texas.
He conceded that Islamic law treats men and women unequally. A man can come directly to the tribunal for a divorce, but a woman seeking to end her marriage must go to a religious leader, or imam, who will bring her case for divorce to the tribunal, he said.
El-badawi added that litigants who are dissatisfied with the rulings of the tribunal can take their cases to Texas civil courts. But, the Islamic Tribunal warns on its website that American justice is expensive.
Another test case but it is early and we don’t see results yet.
Britain has been adopting it for Muslim residents.
Islamic law is to be effectively enshrined in the British legal system for the first time under guidelines for solicitors on drawing up “Sharia compliant” wills.
Under ground-breaking guidance, produced by The Law Society, High Street solicitors will be able to write Islamic wills that deny women an equal share of inheritances and exclude unbelievers altogether.
The documents, which would be recognised by Britain’s courts, will also prevent children born out of wedlock – and even those who have been adopted – from being counted as legitimate heirs.
Britain is far down that path and my British friends seem to be self segregating themselves away from it.
Who seemed to be…
>>A Sharia tribunal has been set up in Dallas.
They need to put a stop to that sort of thing immediately. We don’t divide the law by identity group in this country.
I don’t think religious courts per se are a problem. They have long existed. Jews and Christians have them too. They deal with issues such as religious marriage and divorce that are outside of the civil law and they have no civil authority in this country. What is a problem is Islamist attempts to impose sharia rules on non-Muslims or to convince legislators or civil court officers to cede authority to sharia in Muslim communities. This has been more a problem in Britain than here, and it’s important for US voters and legislators to be vigilant in blocking Islamist attempts to gain power in this way.
What Michael H. said — no sharia law courts. No. Absolutely. Full stop.
I’d be inclined to be tolerant of a general community agreement, among members of a community like the Amish, or like the strict Jewish are said to have, with regard to their own communities if all parties are agreeable.
But sharia (and I am leaving this word uncapped for a reason) law is being insinuated by the aggressive Muslim communities for their own purposes – to make it coequal with established American law as regards to Muslim communities, and that is unacceptable.
Supposedly, the failure of Ahmed the Clock-Boy’s family and mosque to get a sharia law court established in their little community in Texas is the motivation for all the legal animus directed against the school system and municipality.
We have only one civil law in the US. It falls impartially across all of our necks. Meddle with it at your peril. Demand exception for your minority group? Even more peril.
Another issue that has been lost in Britain and might start to appear here is multiple wives. In Britain, a large percentage Muslims, over 350,000 non-subjects are on the Dole and many Muslim men have multiple wives on the Dole, even getting the Dole to pay for multiple cars to drive them around.
This figures I believe are just immigrants.
The migrants, who can claim unemployment, housing and incapacity benefit, are costing taxpayers billions of pounds a year.
In other countries, many would have had to return home after their visas expired or their employment ended.
But Chris Bryant, shadow immigration minister, today blamed the Government and said the situation would only get worse due to lax border controls, rising migration and increasing unemployment.
No mention that I see of legal subjects on the Dole. Of course, the only part of England/Britain that has a positive GDP is southeast England around London and the south coast. Everywhere else, the costs are higher than tax revenue.
In World War II, Allied propagandists made some effort to separate “ordinary” Germans from the Nazis. That was just another variant of the age-old divide-your-enemies strategy.
I think that was the right strategy, and I think we ought to use a similar strategy, today.
A very large portion of the world’s Muslims are nominal Muslims, about as devout in their faith as Trump is in his. In Iraq, for instance, about half of adult men do hot attend mosque regularly. Another large portion believe, but are not militant about it, are willing to live and let live. We ought to try to separate those two groups from the smaller number who support violent attacks on us, and the even smaller number who will attack us.
As far as I can tell, Donald Trump wants to divide the Republican Party, and unite the Muslims of the world against us. Neither makes much sense, to me.
That said, I should add that I have long favored restrictions on immigration — including legal immigration — and that we should, as I said this mornimg and have been saying for years, exclude those immigrants who do not share most American values. That would exclude militant Muslims — and Maoists, and many others who we do not want here.
Moreover, it should be obvious to anyone that we can not expell radical Muslims who are American citizens. We can watch them, and attempt to prevent more conversions by, for example, monitoring our prisons more closely,
Finally, as I also said this morning, there are a few Muslims we should welcome — the translators who worked with our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There is a religious test already for refugees. It screens out Christians and only accepts Muslims. Our current leadership can’t be trusted to defend the United States, and every new crisis proves they are in fact making things worse. It’s debatable whether or not Muslims can assimilate, but is there any doubt that they certainly never will while Obama is in office?
ICYMI: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428146/more-than-few-islamic-extremists
I agree entirely with Jim Miller.
I was watching Fox News for a while this evening. I think they are missing the whole thing here. Trump is saying things that resonate with ordinary people, many of whom have tuned out the politicians as useless ciphers.
The Democrats are going ape but they are missing it, too.
A lot of black churchgoing voters are starting to look at Trump. Mexican illegals threaten them. Now, Muslims are a threat.
We have the worst ruling class in our history and they are reacting as we might have predicted.
They paraded out some former Marine Muslim on Facebook to complain about Trump. I have been interviewing and examining recruits for three plus years. I cannot recall a Muslim recruit. I did see an Afghan a couple of years ago but do not know if he was observant.
We had serious problems with Muslims in the military even before Major Hassan. We had a serious fragging incident in Kuwait.
A sergeant accused of killing a fellow serviceman by throwing grenades into tents at a military command center in Kuwait told his mother he feared persecution because he is a Muslim and reportedly had recently been reprimanded for insubordination.
Sgt. Asan Akbar of the 101st Airborne Division’s 326th Engineer Battalion was in custody, said George Heath, a civilian spokesman at Fort Campbell. Heath said Akbar had not been charged with a crime but was the only person being questioned in the attack that also wounded 15 other soldiers Sunday, three seriously.
I’m not sure we want these guys.
Michael Hiteshaw – I’ve seen those numbers, of course, and even, from time to time, speculated on just how many active enemies we have among the Muslim population.
But you might be more interested in this estimate from a British military expert. He says it would take two weeks to “destroy ISIS as a state”. (I assume he is counting only the military campaign, not the time to assemble the forces.)
Earlier I linked to an article quoting anonymous experts who said that it could be done with a ground force of about 40,000.
ISIS has had years to assemble forces, lots of maney, and has been very good at propaganda. I haven’t seen a recent estimate, but I think they have all of about 50,000 fighters in Iraq and Syria.
That’s a relatively small number, considering that there are about 1 billion Muslims in the world.
Jonathan – Thanks much says he, blushing.
We know we don’t want to go to war with Obama and his Pentagon in commend.
Read Dakota Meyers book. Into the Fire.
A Marine was disciplined for shooting back at Taliban who were firing mortars into their position. When they went into the trap in the Afghan village, they asked for artillery support after it was apparent it was an ambush. It took hours to get any support.
RoE are killing our troops and it hurts me to see the pictures of the guys who have died in Afghanistan since Obama.
The left hated “Oh Dark Thirty” and “American Sniper.” The Army records of the Ranger School for the two women who “passed” that course are unavailable and Congressmen have been told they have been “Shredded.” This is NEVER done. The Centcom commander has altered intel reports to minimize the failures of Obama,.
McMaster will need a sequel to Dereliction of Duty, after this is over.
Maybe they will not make much progress before the next president takes over. If it is Hillary, which I now think unlikely, we are screwed.
The problem with what Jim Miller said is that the moderates carry the disease (see the links offered up by Michael Hiteshaw and others, above) and more often than not, encourage it.
It bears repeating that we should discriminate against the political ideology that is Islam and discourage it in any humane way we can. Whatever trappings of a religion it has are immaterial.
>> as I said this mornimg and have been saying for years, exclude those immigrants who do not share most American values. That would exclude militant Muslims — and Maoists, and many others who we do not want here.
Not trying to sound snarky, but realistically, what is your plan for peering into their hearts?
>>They paraded out some former Marine Muslim on Facebook to complain about Trump. I have been interviewing and examining recruits for three plus years. I cannot recall a Muslim recruit.
I was at the gym last night and CNN was on one of the TVs. The anchor, who was black, was interviewing a muslim woman in a hijab and a muslim businessman. The theme was the that Trump and Republicans were racist bigots. They hate muslims because they’re brown. They hate them because they aren’t southern Christians. Whatever. Nothing new there. We all know why the Left has aligned itself with the enemies of western civilization. It’s on their conscience, not mine. Not that any of the prominent leftists have a conscience.
Michael H, I agree with your position 100%. It is utterly foolish to regard the threat of islam as just the handful who kill. The real threat is the huge ideological and political support network that is muslim culture, none of which is actionable by law enforcement but which none the less provides a fertile training and recruitment source for an endless number of killers. Muslim culture is openly opposed to western values. The only reason they are not a civilizational threat is because they are not yet a majority in our home countries. Would anyone seriously feel comfortable about the future of their kids if the country was 60% muslim and voted for the things the believe? It would be civil war, without a doubt. It is not a religion in the normal sense of the word as we mean it today, it is a political ideology cloaked in religious ritual. It can and should be singled out for targeting and elimination. They will certainly do that to us, if they get a majority.
I always thought the difference between a religion and a cult was this: You are free to join and leave a religion, at your will. If you join a cult, you will not be allowed to leave freely, or, if allowed to leave, will be harassed by the continuing members.
Islam, IMO, is a cult. It extends beyond the normal bounds of a religion, more or less limited to particular beliefs in ritual and behavior, to demand compliance of non-members. In that manner, with that edict as a controlling factor, it becomes political. It sets out to assimilate or destroy that which is ‘different’. All other religions, to my knowledge, do not expound the idea of destruction of non-members, or those who refuse to become members.
Death is not subject to religious control, it is subject to political or governmental control. Once a ‘religion’ determines life or death, it ceases to be just a religion.
Unless it can be reformed from within, it will be reformed from without, and the resulting conflict will not be peaceful.
It makes good sense to me to seriously consider a pause in immigration from specific areas until more comprehensive vetting is possible. Economic refugees should not be at the top of the list, but religious refugees, the persecuted, should get more consideration. IMO.
The US Constitution is NOT a suicide pact. Islam is not a religion.
It is entirely lawful to deny entry to Muslems. The supreme court decided this issue in favor of the Democrat’s saint FDR.
It is suicidal invite thousands of Muslim into our country so that they can plot and implement mass murder schemes.
Look at what 7 muslems achieved on 9/11 armed with box cutters.
So far only 0.6% of Syrian refugees invited into the US are Christian. There was a time when 40% of Syrians were Christian. Sultan Obama only allows muslim refugees into the USA. This is not the act of a native born American.
“while welcoming … Muslims who want to assimilate into our culture”: but how on earth could you tell? And even if they did, would their children?
I guess you do believe the lies you have been told. Most of the world does not believe them.
You knocked over the Trade centers to have an excuse to attack Iraq. A crusade engineered to divide the Muslim world and secure oil. This is what most of the world and certainly those you attacked believe. As they are fighting the Crusaders again, they will do whatever they think is needed to preserve their religion.
ISIS is a reasonable response in many Muslims view, and more importantly the many who hate America for what they have done in the middle east.
As Hillery is almost pure deep state, she will be elected. Trump is just great, America being it’s self. ROTFLMFAO.
“You knocked over the Trade centers to have an excuse to attack Iraq”
Penny a “Truther.” Might have expected that – stupid AND vicious is an unbeatable combination.
From Glen Reynolds USA Today column Liberals have chosen The Donald as their ‘Destructor’:
“Right now, after years of Obama hope-and-change, a majority of Americans (56%) think Islam is incompatible with American values. That’s true even for 43% of Democrats.”
Well, the majority are looking around at the catastrophe that is the Arab-islamic world, watching the muslims in Europe refuse to assimilate, and rightly saying, No way. We don’t any part of that ideology in our country.
“Not trying to sound snarky, but realistically, what is your plan for peering into their hearts?”
Michael Hiteshaw – Perhaps you should also address that question to Donald Trump.
And there is no doubt that it is a difficult problem. Suppose, for example, that a recent convert to Islam — and a Brittsh citizen — who wants to harm us, applies to enter the United States. Trump would have to look into the man’s heart to determine that the man is a Muslim; I would have to look into the man’s heart to determine that he wants to harm us.
Neither of us would find that easy to do.
This is similar to the problem of keeping Communsists out during the Cold War, and some of the things we did then would be appropriate to do now.
But your question — whether intended snarkily or not — deserves a longer answer, and I hope to provide one in post on my site, perhaps as soon as next week,
Jim, it was meant realistically, not as snark. My idea is that if you’re muslim, your ideology is not welcome here.
And while we’re talking about fixing our broken system, what say we refuse to provide any kind of welfare benefits to immigrants. If private groups want to, fine, they’re welcome to it, but nothing from the government. Maybe make an exception for those who have actually served our country such as translators in the late war, but not for any other reason. Root, hog, or die (you should pardon the expression).
Here is a careful essay on Islam and how God gave us Sharia law which over rules all other laws including the US Constitution. Sharia law requires jihad and chopping off the heads of Christians and all other non-believers.
“Crucially, the interpretation of Islam that is mainstream in most Muslim-majority countries does not accept a division between mosque and state. . . .
“The lack of separation between spiritual and civic life is not the only problem with Islam. Sharia is counter-constitutional in its most basic elements — beginning with the elementary belief that people do not have a right to govern themselves freely. Islam, instead, requires adherence to sharia and rejection of all law that contradicts it. So we start with fundamental incompatibility, before we ever get to other aspects of sharia: its systematic discrimination against non-Muslims and women; its denial of religious liberty, free speech, economic freedom, privacy rights, due process, and protection from cruel and unusual punishments; and its endorsement of violent jihad in furtherance of protecting and expanding the territory it governs.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428201/donald-trump-muslim-immigration-policy-discussion.
Read the whole thing
“Crucially, the interpretation of Islam that is mainstream in most Muslim-majority countries does not accept a division between mosque and state
I worked with a pair of muslim brothers in the 1980’s, their family were refugees from the Afghan war. Very nice people but also very Westernized. Their family wer part of the ruling elite that got out when the Soviets invaded.
They told me then the biggest misconception Westerners had about islam was that there was a distinction between church law and state or national law. There is no such idea in islam, he explained. It is all one.